MSDN Gripe

In my perfect MSDN world, clicking a link to a reference article like this findText method would not result in a redirection and wait as the MSDN table of contents tree loads on the left. Why can’t I go directly to an article without the toc? Why doesn’t the toc retain its collapsed state?

A few years ago, a commercial pilot flying a single engine airplane near Seattle was lost and dangerously low on fuel. His passengers were starting to worry. As he flew along he noticed a small hole in the overcast, and zoomed down through it.

He saw a tall building, and what looked like a janitor cleaning up an office on the 20th floor. He opened the pilot’s side window and yelled to the janitor "I’m lost; can you tell me where I am?’ The janitor looked at him, and with a straight face said: "you’re in an airplane !".

The pilot made an immediate right turn, flew a couple of miles, and made an uneventfuly landing at Boeing Field.

His passengers were amazed. "How did you do that with the little that the janitor told you?"

"Simple", said the pilot. "That man answered my question with an answer that was perfectly correct but absolutely useless. That must have been Microsoft’s Customer Support Office, and the airport is only a couple of miles away !"

Tosh: We here in the MSDN world, are working on a new version of the MSDN Online library, as well as, moving the entire MSDN documentation collection to XML. As an employee, you are probably well aware, we receive user education documentation from just about every group within Microsoft, including from the Exchange team, and every team has different layouts, CSS, and other web functionality that has to be accommodated within what is known as the MSDN Library. These issues along, along with trying to provide consistent branding across all of the Microsoft.com domain requires reuse of code that is in current QFE only mode. In this particular instance, features were weighed by usability studies and customer feedback, and decisions were made accordingly.

BTW the initial project name for this version of the MSDN Library was called ‘Utopia’…